Is this really what we can see?

[jogad]

Hello



Show in Celestia

Look at the picture above.
It shows a view of Saturn from space on Christmas Day in 2002.

At that time the ring is very inclined on the orbit and aligned so that sunlight strikes it from the south.

On the image the sunlight comes from the right and we can see the shadow of the ring on the north hemisphere of the planet.

So the side of the ring that we are looking at is the north side and is not illuminated by the Sun.

Thus I think the ring should be invisible or at least very dimly lit.

What is your opinion about that?

[selden]

The real rings are not solid objects. They're a collection of many tiny objects.They don't cast shadows on one another and you can see the sunlit hemispheres of all of them. Although Celestia draws the rings as a single object, if you move your viewpoint around Saturn, you will see the ring brightness vary: the shadowed sides of the rings are darker when your viewpoint is on the dark side of Saturn. The variations aren't quite right, though. I believe that Chris L. is planning to improve the ring illumination algorithm for v1.7 of Celestia.

[jogad]

Selden, thank you very much for the quick response concise and precise.

I was a little afraid that the level of this forum reserve it for the specialists and I am glad to see that it’s not.

Jogad

[selden]

You're very welcome.